Guantánamo: Torture victim Binyam Mohamed sues British government for evidence

10.5.08

On Tuesday, Binyam Mohamed, a 29-year old British resident in Guantánamo, sued the British government for refusing to produce evidence which, his lawyers contend, would demonstrate that he was tortured for 27 months by or on behalf of US forces in Morocco and Afghanistan, that any “evidence” against him was only obtained through torture, and that the British government and intelligence services knew about his torture and provided personal information about him — unrelated to terrorism — that was used by the Americans’ proxy torturers in Morocco.

They insist, moreover, that his case is an urgent priority, because he is about to be charged before a Military Commission in Guantánamo — the much-criticized system of trials for “terror suspects” that was conceived by the US administration in November 2001 — and they desperately need the exculpatory evidence in the possession of the British government to assist in his defence, and to prove his innocence.

Binyam’s torture

A refugee from Ethiopia, who arrived in the UK in 1994 and was later granted indefinite leave to remain, Binyam Mohamed was working as a cleaner in an Islamic Centre in west London in 2001, and attempting to recover from a drug problem, when he decided to travel to Afghanistan to see what the Taliban regime was like, and, he hoped, to steer clear of drugs because of the Taliban’s reputation as fierce opponents of drug use.

He came to the attention of both the American and British intelligence services in April 2002, when he was seized by the Pakistani authorities as he tried to board a flight to London. Although he had a valid airline ticket, his passport had been stolen, and, rather foolishly, he had borrowed a British friend’s passport instead.

In the heightened tension in Pakistan at the time — just days after Abu Zubaydah, an alleged senior al-Qaeda operative, was captured in Faisalabad — Binyam was immediately regarded with enormous suspicion by the American agents who visited him in the Pakistani prison in which he was held.

Although he later reported to his lawyer — Clive Stafford Smith of the legal action charity Reprieve, which represents 35 prisoners in Guantánamo — that the British checked out his story, and confirmed that he was a “nobody,” the Americans were not convinced, and decided to send him to Morocco, where he could be interrogated by professional torturers who were not bothered about international treaties preventing the use of torture, and who were equally unconcerned about whether evidence of their activities would ever surface.

Speaking of his time in Morocco, where he was held for 18 months, Binyam told Stafford Smith that he was subjected to horrendous torture, which, included, but was not limited to having his penis cut with a razor on a regular basis. In spite of this, the regular beatings and other torture that he did not even want to talk about, Binyam said that his lowest moment of all came when his torturers produced evidence of his life in London, which could only have come from the British intelligence services, and he realized that he had been abandoned and betrayed by his adopted homeland.

After Morocco, Binyam was transferred to Afghanistan, where he endured further torture in the “Dark Prison,” a secret “black site” near Kabul, run by the CIA, which was a grim recreation of a medieval dungeon, but with the addition of non-stop music and noise, blasted into the pitch-dark cells at an ear-piercing volume.

Moved from here to the main US prison at Bagram airbase, where at least two prisoners were murdered by US forces, Binyam was finally put on a plane to Guantánamo in September 2004, two and a half years after his ordeal began.

In Guantánamo, he was put forward for a Military Commission in November 2005, and made one memorable appearance before the military court, when he held up a hand-written placard declaring that the Commissions were in fact “Con-Missions,” but in June 2006 the judge in his case was spared further embarrassment when the entire system was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Revived later that year by a barely sentient Congress, the trials have since struggled to establish their legitimacy, and have yet to proceed beyond arraignment and pre-trial proceedings, with the exception of the case of the Australian David Hicks, who accepted a plea bargain last March in order to return home to serve a desultory nine-month sentence.

In recent months, however, the administration, which boldly states that it intends to try between 60 and 80 of the remaining 273 prisoners, has stepped up the rate at which new prisoners are being charged. In an attempt to save Binyam from a second dose of the Commissions, his lawyers at Reprieve, together with solicitors from Leigh Day & Co., decided that the most constructive and innovative way to secure Binyam’s release was to put pressure on the British government.

The letter to the UK government

Armed with evidence from flight logs, which confirmed that CIA planes had flown from Pakistan to Morocco in July 2002, and from Morocco to Afghanistan in January 2004, as Binyam said they had, and with numerous accounts of British complicity in his interrogations, and knowledge of his rendition to torture, the lawyers submitted a list of requests to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, at the end of March.

The extensive list of items requested included any evidence relating to UK knowledge of Binyam’s forthcoming rendition while he was held in Pakistan from April to July 2002, including “the identity of the US agents involved, so that they can be traced and interviewed or subpoenaed,” and any evidence relating to Binyam’s claim that representatives of the British intelligence services told him in Pakistan that they knew that he was a “nobody,” which, the lawyers stated, led them to “assume that the UK intelligence services and police have carried out investigations in to Mr. Mohamed’s activities whilst in the UK.” “We believe,” they added, “that such evidence will show that he does not represent a terrorist threat,” and that as such “it forms a necessary part of his defence.”

The lawyers also asked “to interview and take statements from the UK agents who (it is conceded) spoke to Mr. Mohamed whilst he was detained in Pakistan,” and who, Binyam stated, “informed him that he was going to be rendered to an Arab country for torture.” In December 2005, Jack Straw, who was the Foreign Secretary at the time, did indeed admit, in testimony to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, that UK Security Service officers visited Binyam while he was in Pakistani custody, and Binyam’s recollections of that encounter were noted by Clive Stafford Smith during a meeting at Guantánamo:

“They gave me a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in it. I initially only took one. ‘No, you need a lot more. Where you’re going, you need a lot of sugar.’ I didn’t know exactly what he meant by this, but I figured he meant some poor country in Arabia. One of them did tell me I was going to get tortured by the Arabs.”

As Binyam’s lawyers pointed out, “Such evidence will be central to the defence of Mr. Mohamed because any evidence obtained as a result of torture is inadmissible.”

The lawyers also requested “information about Mr. Mohamed’s life in the United Kingdom that could only have come from UK intelligence agencies or other government sources,” which, as Binyam pointed out, caused him particular distress in Morocco, when it was used by his torturers. According to Stafford Smith, this information included “personal details about his life in the UK, such as details of his education, the name of his kick-boxing trainer and his friendships in London, which he had never mentioned during interrogations, and that could only have originated from collusion in the process by the UK security or secret intelligence services.”

In addition, the lawyers requested any evidence about rendition flights that stopped on the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean (which is leased to the United States). After five years of denials, the British government finally admitted in February that two flights had indeed stopped at Diego Garcia, and Binyam’s lawyers requested information about these flights, pointing out that one of the flights had “subsequently stopped in Morocco at the time that Mr. Mohamed was there,” and that it was, therefore, “almost certainly (a) taking another prisoner to Morocco for torture; or (b) taking US personnel there who were involved in Mr. Mohamed’s interrogation process.”

The lawyers also requested any evidence relating to Binyam’s time in the “Dark Prison” in Kabul, where, they noted, “it seems highly probable that the UK government has details of the conditions that prevailed there,” because various British residents — including Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil El-Banna, who returned to the UK from Guantánamo last year — were also held there, and any evidence relating to Binyam’s time in Bagram, where other British prisoners were also held.

The lawyers’ final request was for access to Binyam’s medical records from Guantánamo. They noted that these were “relevant to the question of torture, and Mr. Mohamed’s current physical and mental condition,” and added that, although the Guantánamo authorities have given the UK government access to Binyam’s records, they have refused to provide them to Stafford Smith. “The UK should provide a copy now,” they wrote, “or provide whatever information or documents they have recording the contents of the medical records.”

The lawsuit

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Reprieve and Leigh Day & Co. was triggered when lawyers for the government responded to the letter described above by refusing to hand over any of the evidence requested by Binyam’s lawyers, claiming that “the UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted,” and adding, “it is HM Government’s position that … evidence held by the UK government that US and Moroccan authorities engaged in torture or rendition cannot be obtained” by Binyam’s lawyers.

The government lawyers proceeded to claim that Binyam’s lawyers did not “provide any evidence” to support their assertion that “such alleged information or assistance ‘was subsequently used in the torture of [Mr. Mohamed],’” to which Reprieve and Leigh Day responded by pointing out that Binyam’s allegation that UK sources provided information to his torturers in Morocco was “found credible” by the Intelligence and Security Committee (IRC), a committee established in the UK Intelligence Services Act 1994, and empowered to examine the expenditure, administration and policies of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Binyam’s lawyers pointed out that the government had ignored the conclusion of the IRC’s Rendition Report in 2007, when the committee had explicitly stated, “There is a reasonable probability that intelligence passed to the Americans was used in [Binyam Mohamed]’s subsequent [Moroccan] interrogation.”

They also cited the particular passage from Binyam’s statement to Clive Stafford Smith, in which he spoke about the interrogation in Morocco that contained information that could only have come from the British intelligence services:

“Today I was questioned about my links with Britain. The interrogator told me, ‘We have been working with the British, and we have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?’ I realized that the British were sending questions to the Moroccans. I was at first surprised that the Brits were siding with the Americans. I sought asylum in Britain rather than America because it’s known as the one country that has laws that it follows. To say that I was disappointed at this moment would be an understatement.”

It remains to be seen, of course, if this novel approach taken by Binyam’s lawyers will bear fruit, but it seems plausible, as it is hardly in the interests of the British government to run the risk of further embarrassing disclosures. The lawsuit may, therefore, put pressure on the politicians to step up their efforts to secure Binyam’s return to Britain — to face charges in the UK, if any can be found that will stick to the “nobody” from west London — rather than to allow him to be tried in a much-criticized system in Guantánamo that threatens to embarrass both the British and the American governments.

[…] Justice Department has dropped the key allegation against British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed – that he was involved, with American citizen Jose Padilla, in a plot to detonate a “dirty […]

[…] Jacqui Smith to investigate possible “criminal wrongdoing” by MI5 and the CIA in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is the latest, and perhaps most significant […]

[…] article, which is worth reading in its entirety, focused primarily on the torture of Abu Zubaydah, Binyam Mohamed and Jose Padilla (which I have discussed at length before), but there were also key insights into […]

This is absurd. He travelled to be with the Taliban- sworn to assist Al-Qeada in destroying us ‘infidels.’ The Taliban are one of the biggest exporters of Opium – they are one of the largest drug dealing organisations in the east. So this man went to the Taliban to get over his drug problem the same year that Al-Qaeda struck? Arrested in Pakistan? It does look like he studied the Al-Qaeda training manual.

His whole story is rather farcical and I fail to see why the British are getting involved in a case between an Ethiopian national, albeit resident in UK for a few years before he headed off to Afghanistan, and a US Court. He was arrested in a sensitive war zone using a false passport, enough to be summarily arrested and interrogated. Has he explained, as a low paid cleaner prior to going to Afghanistan, how he funded his travel and upkeep during his period there and in Pakistan? It is my contention that he has forfeited the privilege of the UK residency permit and should be either returned to Ethopia or a neighbouring country – NOT permitted to return here.

The UK is home to countless terrorist groups because they know this vile government will fund and support them, and will not extradite them to any nation that might lay a little finger on the poor souls. One day, we will have our way.

Exactly! I agree with Rowley (23 Feb) and with Tony (5 Feb). You don’t go to Afghanistan to get over a drug problem! RIdiculous. You go to your local mosque & seek help. I regret very much the torture he endured, but this man is NOT a friend of the UK. There is no reason why he cannot be deported to Ethiopia or Somalia. For example, I have neighbours who travel twice a year to visit grandparents in Somalia, so there is no reason why he cannot be exported back to be near his own culture, climate & kin. The key to understanding what is going wrong with Britain is to realise that for the last 12 yrs New Labour has had a covert agenda, and that is to create a communitarian surveilled society. Check out “Common Purpose”.

What other country would be so stupid as to allow a confirmed enemy of our way of life to come back here with the full ‘red carpet’ treatment at tax payers expense?
Is he grateful? of course not – he now wants to sue us for all he can get and our stupid ‘leaders’ will of course facilitate him in this by throwing huge amounts of public money at his ‘lawyers’. Oh, we will also provide him with free housing, benefits and all the rest of it as well.

He has no connection with this country, hates our way of life and is only interested in what he can get out of us.

You can’t really blame him though when offered unimaginable riches by greedy lawyers, what would anyone do?

The real damage though is that all this adds to the appeal of the far right groups who now seem to be gaining more support than ever. Wake up Britain, or is it already too late?

I think as his story has been checked by our government, who must surely be experts on the subject, we have to believe
his entire story and conclude that it was all just a series of unfortunate coincidences.I mean be fair, who hasn’t woken up in Afghanistan after a drug fueled party with only enough money for a flight home and a fake passport.It seems those nice Taliban chaps were very helpful in trying to get him home.Don’t we all wish we could have such kindness shown in the UK.He must be such a great guy that even hardened terrorists were moved to help him.We should all apologise to him and in some way compensate him for his troubles.Perhaps Sir Fred Goodwin could chip in a few hundred thousand.

He could and perhaps should have been summarily deported to Ethiopia for using a false British passport, but under no circumstances does it serve any anti-terrorist purpose to have him tortured for such a long time before realising that he is “not guilty”. It was not a crime a the time to visit the Taliban, but it certainly was serious to use a false British passport.

SO MR MOHAMED IS TO SUE BRITAIN? FOR WHAT ? HIS SO FAR UNEVIDENCED ACCUSATIONS OF TORTURE, AS FAR AS HAS BEEN DETERMINED, HIS TREATMENT AT THE VARIOUS US BASES HAS AT WORST BEEN VIEWED AS ;CRUEL AND UNUSUAL AND HAS AMOUNTED TO NO MORE THAN THAT METED OUT TO SUSPECTS HELD AND QUESTIONED BY OUR OWN POLICE FORCES, CONSTANT REPETITIVE QUESTIONING AND DISTURBANCE OF SLEEP PATERNS SO AS TO CAUSE DISCOMFORT ETC’

THE REAL QUESTION IS HOW A PERSON WHO REPORTEDLY RESIDED IN THE U.S. FROM 1992 TO 1994 WAS THEN ENABLED TO TRAVEL FROM THAT NATION TO THE U.K.. DID HE ARRIVE SUPPORTED BY AND IN POSSESSION OF HIS ORIGINAL ‘ETHIOPIAN’ PASSPORT ETC’ AS THIS WOULD, THROUGH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, BE A NECESSITY FOR INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL OWING TO THE THEN IMMIGRATION LAW OF THE UNITED STATES? AND, THIS HAVING BEEN AKNOWLEGED AND MADE EVIDENT TO THE RELEVANT REPRESENTATIVES OF THE U.K. HOW COULD HE THEN BE ALLOWED OR INDEED EVEN CONSIDERED AS MERITING ASYLUM STATUS. FURTHER TO THIS SUBJECT, HOW WAS HE ENABLED TO TRAVEL ON TO PAKISTAN? THIS JOURNEY REQUIRING AN APPLICATION FOR A VISA AND THE CONSEQUENT SUBMITTANCE OF DOCUMENTS OF IDENTIFICATION (GIVEN HIS OWN REASON FOR TRAVELLING WAS TO KICK A SERIOUS DRUG HABIT WHICH HAD NO DOUBT RESULTED IN A CRIMINAL RECORD I WOULD STATE THAT KNOWING THIS, THE PAKISTANI AUTHORITIES WOULD NOT HAVE ISSUED A VISA,). AND HAVING BEEN ONLY RECENTLY GRANTED LEAVE TO REMAIN IN THE U.K I DOUBT VERY MUCH THAE LEGITIMACY OF THE DOCUMENTS PROVIDED TO OBTAIN SUCH. I ACCEPT SOME AGENDA DRIVEN GROUPS OR INDIVIDUALS WILL POUR SCORN ON THE ABOVE SO HERE ARE THE BASIC FACTS AS KNOWN:

Binyam Mohamed is an Ethiopian who lived in the United States from 1992 to 1994, and in London, United Kingdom, until he departed for Pakistan in 2001.

Binyam Mohamed arrived in Islamabad, Pakistan, in June 2001, and traveled to the al Farouq training camp in Afghanistan, to receive paramilitary training.

At the al Farouq camp, B. Mohamed received 40 days of training in light arms handling, explosives, and principles of topography. Binyam Mohamed was taught to falsify documents, and received instruction from a senior al Qaeda operative on how to encode telephone numbers before passing them to another individual.

HE HAS FREELY ADMITTED ALL OF THIS TO HIS LEGAL COUNCIL AND IT IS A THEREFORE A MATTER OF RECORD AND CAN IN NO WAY BE DETERMINED AS HAVING BEEN EXTRACTED THROUGH ‘TORTURE’
.IF YOU DISBELIEVE ANY OF THE ABOVE PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT HIS LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES WHO SEEM MORE CONTENT IN CLAIMING THAT WHICH HAS NO EVIDENT BASIS NAMELY HIS ‘TORTURE’, THAN DEALING WITH KNOWN FACTS

I think they’re turning up one by one, Nell, rather than being organized. I let most comments through — short of personal abuse — to let people have their say, but it’s slightly worrying, as a zeitgeist barometer, if you like. I haven’t seen such sustained hostility since I defended Omar Khadr on these pages last summer, and discovered, to my horror, that some people really believe that a 15-year old deserved all the abuse that the US military subjected him to, rather than the rehabilitation laid down in the UN’s Optional Protocol on the Rights of the Child.

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GOVERNMENT DOING ?
WHY IS HE HERE?
WHAT EXACTLY HAS HE HAD TO OFFER THE UK TO KEEP HIM HERE… ?
WHY ARE WE THE TAX PAYER ALLOWING HIM TO BE PAMPERED, THE GUY WAS FOUND IN AL FAROUQ CAMP…
WHAT NEXT ….
A NEW HOUSE,
CAR,
HOLIDAY’S ABROAD TO “CAMP AL FAROUQ” Afghanistan?
NO WONDER THE AMERICAN’S WANTED HIM OUT,
DEPORT HIM !!!
HE IS PLAYING THE SYSTEM & BROWN IS ALLOWING HIM TO DO SO.
SEND HIM HOME!

They should have just terminated this ****er when they had him in custody. There is no way this chap is whiter than white and now he wants to settle in the UK??? OMG is hwe mentally unstable or what? Does he expect people to let him be? He’s a bad apple and should be deported to Pakistan to live the rest of his miserable life out there. There is always a place for toture when there is the possibility other people’s lives may be saved. He is laughing at the UK right now, making money out of his antics and when you look at it….if he does indeed represent or would like to represent another nasty party we all know and hate, then they are simply laughing at the joke being played out at the UK’s expense. I say deport him, get the sucker out he hasn’t done anything notably good enough to warrant a stay in the UK. Ship him back to where he obviously wanted to go in the first place and leave him there!

send Bin Yan Mohamed Back to his own country. he is a British Resident not a British Citizen What was he doing in Pakistan with an Illegal Passport ??? This Terrorist should be executed for crimes against Britain. We dont need to waste time and energy on people like him

I was treated worse than him by my llocal police force I was forced to give DNA, I refused to give DNA so the Police pursed my lips open and forcibly DNA was taken. I was forced to have my hands on the Electronic finger prints and Had my hair pulled out for DNA. so- send Bin Yan Mohamed Back to his own country or I will make an application for toture too. Why does the media waste money on People liek this and as far as these civil rights organiations are concerned trying to destroy British life, Send all illegal people back to thier own country and anyone else who hates this country including Muslims who continue to abuse our system, terrorits, murderers, people with fake passports, anyone who is ilegal here shoudl be picked up and deported FAST.

mohammed has evry rite to sue the british goverment.. they can provide the evedance because the secret service is not cooperating… and centuries ago it was our british barbarians and the wimp zionist who destroyed there home land ethopia.. the brits went there took the goodness and came back just like they did whith the persian war.. you are not looking wide enuff you british are narrow minded and animals.. saint richrards went to arabia to sell trade your white british sisters for knowledge then used it against them.. who are the dogs the brits and americans… you are the biggest terrorist we are people with heart who are upset of how small monded and unapritiating the british public is. you talk about evedence and all.. yet you dont see that its in our arab state morrocco where mohamed was tortured by his own muslim brothers and why???? so you stupid fool we and any other person we from a cultural back groungd have more writes than you… think wbefore you speak…

Binyam Mohamed should have been returned to the country where he was initially arrested, Pakistan. If he had the means to travel out there he must surely have the means to return to Britain, if not i am sure his Taleban friends will give him sufficient funds after his training sessions with Al Qaeda. We share intelligence information to try and keep our countries secure and free from terrorism. On his return to England he should have been deported to Ethiopia or to the US, how he has the cheek to sue our government into which i doubt he has paid any taxes and live in anonymity. The government really ought make a stand against people like Mohamed.

On Tuesday 29th November 2005 at Stafford County Court I was kept against my will for two hours in a sideroom, with the man who had raped me (and has stood as a political candidate in local elections) placed directly outside the door, by two solicitors who were trying to force me to sign documents against my will. These people threatened me that if I did not sign the documents that the Judge would be angry with me and take my son away from me. I was screaming for almost half an hour, in the end, they had to let me go, with the documents unsigned.

This is also torture.

So when the British Government claim to know nothing about UK sanctioned torture, they are liars. I have written thousands of letters to the Government, and recieved replies from two Prime Ministers, Jack Straw, Bridget Prentice, Ann Widdecome, Mark Fisher and many more politicians and Lords. Lord Kingsland, Baroness Howe of Idlecote and Lord Ramsbotham have also been written to and replied.

They don’t just torture suspect terrorists in the UK – they also torture women and children. It is an absolute outrage.

I hope Binyan Mohamed does succeed in suing the government of this country. I’m sorry to say this, but I really think that our country is being run by gangsters. It hurts to say that – this is my homeland!

I, like my Brit compatriots feel like we are the aliens in our own country, it’s comparable to having your hands tied behind your back, and being slapped in the face on a daily basis and not being allowed to retalliate, that’s the real torture. We are the ones being demonised if we speak the truth, freedom of speach appears to be unidirectional. Extremists can say whatever they like about us natural born Brits ( Natural born Brits includes black white and any other colour that was born here and really wants to contribute to a peaceful Britain) but don’t you dare say a thing out of place as a natural born Brit about anybody else that may be destroying your Identity. That was proved the other day when our brave troops that fight for domocracy and freedom of speach had to listen to taunts and abuse from extremist gobshites who have the fortune to be staying in a country like ours, if they really want to contribute then they should go and help in the countries they feel are being abused.

1/ I am NOT against Immigration. British citizens did it to the Australians years ago and were welcomed…..Just as long as WE were prepared to accept THEIR way of life.

2/ I do NOT begrudge people from other countries coming here to work LEGALLY and enjoy the same rights as I have. To go to school, get up every morning and do a full days work, and pay TAXES like the rest of us, regardless of the race, creed, colour or religion.

I have lived in London ALL of my life, having been born here I consider this MY country but over the years I have come to begrudge ALL of the spongers and people from various countries around the world who are not happy in their own country but want to turn OUR country into one like Theirs……it don’t make sense.
If they can’t enter the UK Legally then they will get in by any means possible, work in the “Black Economy”. (or am I not allowed to use the word BLACK in that context either now?)
Whilst out shopping recently I ventured to ask a young black man sitting in his car with a baby in a car seat if he was entitled to be parked in a DISABLED PARKING BAY, and was none to politiely told “F*&K off you HONKEY, what’s it got to do with you where I park”……WOW, Now if I wasn’t WHITE I might have considered that as racial abuse. YES, i do begrudge being treated WORSE than a forigner in my own country by people like this.

Binyan Mohamed MAY have been given indefinite leave to stay here but I think he gave up that right the day he left the country on a false passport.
if he “wanted OUT” then he should have stayed out….the mere fact of where he was found and what he might have been up to in such suspicious circumstances beggers believe that the UK will now fly him back, private jet and personal escorts….WHY…..Were they worried he WERN’T going to want to come back here?

NOT A PROBLEM……maybe his next flight will be one OUT of the UK on a permament basis….to anywhere in the world who will have him. He sure isn’t contributing anything to the economy here and the only person he wants to help, is himself!….to MY money, YOUR money and anyone elses who will help fund a lifesyle he could never hope to achieve on his own merits.

I read a comment on here that IF he had been killed whilst on his travels abroad this matter would never have come to light and he would be just another statistic.
COMPENSATION?? if he would like some “compensation” perhaps he would like to stay in this country and work and pay taxes and then he will get the same “compensation” the rest of us get at the end of our working lives…..
A STATE PENSION!.

[…] It is a complicated story: Mohamed was born in Ethiopia in July 1978 and came to England as a young adult, where he found work as a caretaker at a London mosque led by radical imam Abu Qatada. His father, an executive with Ethiopian Airlines, had fled his native country for the United States after the rise of the Mengistu regime, but the boy was taunted at school in Washington and was brought to London. He went to Afghanistan in 2001 to “cure a drug habit” (ever heard the expression “sending coals to Newcastle“?) but was detained in Pakistan after MI5 and the CIA asked to question him about his connections with radical groups and individuals. He was reported to have been using a fake passport. […]

[…] It is a complicated story: Mohamed was born in Ethiopia in July 1978 and came to England as a young adult, where he found work as a caretaker at a London mosque led by radical imam Abu Qatada. His father, an executive with Ethiopian Airlines, had fled his native country for the United States after the rise of the Mengistu regime, but the boy was taunted at school in Washington and was brought to London. He went to Afghanistan in 2001 to “cure a drug habit” (ever heard the expression “sending coals to Newcastle“?) but was detained in Pakistan after MI5 and the CIA asked to question him about his connections with radical groups and individuals. He was reported to have been using a fake passport. […]

[…] reveal information relating to its knowledge of his rendition and torture. This particular process began last April, and I have reported its twists and turns over the last 15 months, involving, in particular, a […]

[…] that followed a judicial review of Mohamed’s case during the summer of 2008, which was itself triggered by the British government’s refusal to release 42 documents in its possession regarding his detention in […]

[…] in securing a judicial review in the case of another of their clients, Binyam Mohamed. Initiated in May 2008, this led, eventually, to a fast-track review of Mohamed’s case by the Obama administration, […]

[…] in securing a judicial review in the case of another of their clients, Binyam Mohamed. Initiated in May 2008, this led, eventually, to a fast-track review of Mohamed’s case by the Obama administration, and […]

Perhaps dear little innocent Binyam Mohamed does not realise we the ordinary law abiding Briish public would much prefer if he was back where he came from – we would have preferred if he had not come here in the first place. It was his decision to go to Afghanistan to seek a cure for his various addictions (yes folks the place world famous for such treatment) and goodness me what a shock he got being arrested. It is such a shame – by that I mean that he got back here. Now the compensation claim…. well there’s a surprise, eh. He was here illegally so why does he have any rights whatsover.

[…] Justice Department has dropped the key allegation against British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed — that he was involved, with American citizen Jose Padilla, in a plot to detonate a “dirty […]

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Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo, co-director, We Stand With Shaker. Also, singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers) and photographer. Email Andy Worthington